


You Tried

by the_heauxly_trinity



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Armitage can't stand to kill Kylo which is played for laughs, Emotionally Constipated Armitage Hux, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-30 03:30:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17216183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_heauxly_trinity/pseuds/the_heauxly_trinity
Summary: “Armitage, I have some homework for you. Every day, for the next seven days, I want you to give the Supreme Leader one unsolicited, unconditionally positive affirmation.”“Compliments,” Armitage said flatly.“Sure,” said the psychologist. “Just one a day. No backhanded compliments, no snide follow-ups – ”“Alright,” said Armitage.“No added-on phrases to diminish the positive statement you made, no sarcasm – ”“Yes, I understand,” Armitage said through his teeth.





	You Tried

**Author's Note:**

> Armitage Hux thinks he's capable of killing Kylo Ren. He also doesn't know what cake is. He will learn.

_Awaken, Son of Darkness! Death is imminent!_

The warning came to Kylo Ren through the Force as he slept. In the next instant, he awoke. At first, he remained motionless. If his assailant did not know he had awakened, Kylo could stop him in the act itself, rather than denying him his chance to commit it, like last time.

The recently declared Supreme Leader Kylo Ren slept in the bed of Armitage Hux. He expected this to happen. The only surprise was how long it had taken Armitage to make another pitiful attempt on his life.

Kylo felt his weight on the mattress next to him. At such time as Hux raised his blaster or his dagger, Kylo intended to stop his arm through the Force and hold it back as he gloated. Only this way would Armitage to learn that his plans to assassinate Kylo and seize the throne for himself were hopeless.

Yet, the attack never came. Armitage sighed heavily after about a minute. The sigh ended with him sucking his teeth, presumably out of frustration. He threw his weapon onto the bedside table and huffed as his head hit the pillow.

 _Interesting_ , thought Kylo Ren.

About a week later, this happened all over again: the Force warning, the lying still, the hovering, the frustrated sigh, Armitage putting his little knife away, and a resignation to sleep. It kept happening at intervals of a week or so, and finally, Kylo counted two weeks in between the assassination attempts. He grew less emotionally invested in them.

_Awaken, Son of Darkness! Death is imminent!_

_I think not._

_Awaken, Kylo Ren!_

_No._

_The traitor lies in wait!_

_It’s fine._

***

Kylo Ren had not been present for a conversation which happened over a year ago in which Captain Phasma said to Armitage Hux, “If you want to kill Kylo Ren so much, why not simply sleep with him and kill him when his guard is down?”

“Phasma, that’s disgusting. Who would do such a thing? I have standards. Besides, soon Ren will be reduced to the mere weapon he ever ought to have been. My Starkiller Base will prove to the Supreme Leader that it is I, not Ren, who embodies devotion and service to the First Order.”

One year after that conversation, Armitage Hux had no Phasma, no Starkiller Base, and apparently no standards. What he did have was Kylo Ren – in his bed, naked, close enough to see the man breathing and feel his warmth, but also with the fate of star systems in the palm of his clumsy hand. In his own, Armitage held his reliable monomonecular dagger, which he had never actually used.

But this would not be the first thing Kylo pushed Armitage to use for the first time. Armitage sacrificed his virginity for this moment. Although Kylo – Ren! Ren. Although Ren would soon lay gurgling to death with a warm, wet puddle of his own inadequacy soaking into Armitage’s bedsheets, he had won that victory. Armitage asked the bitter rhetorical question in his own mind: Are you quite proud of yourself, Ren?

Armitage knelt (equally naked) on his mattress next to who he was loathe to call _Supreme Leader_. It would be over soon, he told himself. No more inclining his head in greeting to someone he wanted to see instead writhing beneath him… on the floor, in agony, because Armitage was torturing him. No more constant vigilance over when Ren might choose to move on him… with violence, obviously, not with anything else, although since the debacle of Crait Ren had never again done anything of the sort. No more sex… no more sex… he could find someone else to have sex with, now that he had gotten acclimated to it… but…

Armitage looked back and forth between the dagger and Ren, chewing the inside of his lip. He summoned the image of Phasma in his mind. She had offered him this idea as though it were an easy thing to kill the man one was sleeping with. Well, how would _she_ know anything about that? She would not. But then again, Phasma was not like Armitage. Sleeping with Ren gave Armitage the opportunity to kill, but now he had incentive not to. Phasma could have treated the same situation as mere means to an end.

Instead of following his own orders to _put a stop to this madness and slit the throat from which seeps the siren-song of Kylo Ren_ , he wondered how Phasma had managed to plant the deadly beetle from her home planet on his father without detection. Oughtn’t Brendol have noticed that she put an insect on him? She would have had to put it on his face or his wrist, unless he had not been wearing his uniform at the time –

Armitage screamed.

Within two seconds, Kylo was on his feet with his lightsaber in his hand. Fortunately (unfortunately?) when Armitage threw the dagger across the room in expression of the horror he found in his realization, he threw it in a different direction. By the red light, Kylo could discern the dagger sticking blade-first into the wall, a distinct lack of any threats in the room, and Armitage shaking, tearing up, and open-mouthed. He exhaled, put his weapon away, and turned on a bedside lamp.

He sensed more turmoil than usual within Armitage. But something was different – so different that Kylo had to stop pretending not to know Armitage still thought he could kill him.

“What’s wrong?”

“ _Phasma_!” Armitage choked, his voice high and strained.

Kylo sank onto the bed and ventured to take his hand. Armitage did not fall into his arms, but also did not pull away. “There’s nothing we can do for her now.”

“ _My f-faa… my father…_ ”

“He’s gone too.”

Now, Armitage did throw himself into Kylo’s arms. Between spluttering exclamations – “She! Him! They! That’s how!” – and the context of the situation, Kylo pieced together what Armitage pieced together moments before. Yes, Kylo thought, that was almost certainly how Phasma had killed Brendol Hux.

But he lied with no effort: “I doubt that happened. You must have had a nightmare.”

“Don’t lie to me,” snapped Armitage, who now had his face concealed against Kylo’s chest.

“I will ask the Force to show me,” Kylo went on. “I will reach out to her spirit with your fears and concerns, and she will – ”

“You can’t do that!” Armitage pushed away from Kylo to minimal success. “Oh, how very convenient, Supreme Leader! You’ve gone off alone for an hour and come back with the good news! I believe you without any evidence that you’ve even attempted to do anything!”

Kylo frowned and averted his eyes. He thought that would work. He tried a different lie, one he could appeal to Armitage’s emotions and memory of Phasma with: “Phasma was better than that.”

“So I’m not _better_ than that?” Armitage shot back, and immediately his distress over Brendol and Phasma turned to distress over his own future when he realized what he said.

Kylo only tapped the tip of Armitage’s nose with the tip of his own finger. “ _You_ can’t kill me.”

The more Armitage thought about what he had said, the more perspective he gained in regards to the Kylo Ren situation, and the worse he came to see that it was. He had revealed to Ren that he slept with him in order to kill him. He had bristled at the idea that he was not _better than_ something Kylo looked down on, so he showed that he cared what Kylo thought of him. Kylo also seemed unphased by these revelations. He knew Armitage had meant to kill him minutes ago and hesitated until he failed. He demeaned him with gestures of affection.

“I-I’ll kill you,” Armitage said, turning red in the face and fumbling for something, anything, to say. “I failed this time. But we’ve all failed before, haven’t we, Ren? Especially on our first attempts.” He patched a shield of smugness together for the last couple of phrases.

“Oh, was that your _first_ attempt?” asked Kylo, and Armitage’s shield fell apart at his sarcastic tone. “So you stare at the man who took your virginity while holding a knife for fun, then?”

And so, in the end, it was Armitage who crumbled in a warm, cuddly trap of his own incompetence. “No,” he admitted.

“It’s alright, Armitage.”

“It’s _not_ alright!” Armitage insisted. Kylo’s indifference to his treasonous intentions grew Armitage’s frustration beyond his ability to contain it. The first tear fell on Kylo’s bare shoulder. There was no hope left.

“It is, it’s alright.”

“I can’t _kill_ you!” Armitage cried.

Kylo rubbed Armitage’s back. “You don’t need to kill me.”

“Yes, I do!”

“No, you don’t…”

“Yes, I _do_!”

“Why?”

“You’re a _menace_!”

“Shhhh. We can rule _together_ , Armitage. That’s what I _want_. We’re better together than we are without each other. I want you at my side.”

“You…” Armitage blinked back some tears and sniffed before daring to show his puzzled face. “You what?”

“I want us to be together.”

***

“…and I haven’t the faintest notion what he meant by that!”

The only resident psychologist on board was not much older than Armitage himself, and yet she studied him in silence with a furrowed brow as she might a much younger client. Armitage stared back at her, waiting for an answer. At this point in the process, he ought to have realized that he would never get an answer from her about anything. All the answers had to come from Armitage. The answers about Phasma and Brendol already had come from Armitage, so then they moved on to what truly concerned him. The psychologist began to nod slowly. Looking her in the eye, Armitage did the same. He sighed. He knew.

“I could still kill him,” said Armitage.

“Let’s talk about the history of your relationship with the Supreme Leader,” offered the psychologist.

“Let’s not call it that,” said Armitage.

“What would you prefer to call it?”

“A situation.”

“Very well. Let’s talk about the history of your situation with the Supreme Leader.”

Armitage told her a condensed version of the story of himself and Kylo Ren. Once he began talking, it was as though a dam had cracked, and soon began to gush, like he had been waiting to tell someone all of it for years.

“Mmhm. Mmhm. I see. And so after the Resistance managed to evade your forces on Crait – ”

“Because of him,” Armitage interjected.

“ – after that, the two of you were left in a… in an interesting situation.”

“Indeed.”

“At that time, you held the rank of General. But you now hold the rank of…?”

“Grand Marshal,” muttered Armitage, as though ashamed of it.

“Yes,” said the psychologist. “How did you come to hold that rank, between the Battle of Crait and the present time?”

“He _promoted_ me.” Armitage might as well have said that Kylo did something twisted and foul. “Almost immediately after.”

“Would you like to tell me about how that happened?”

“I did _not_ sleep with him for the promotion,” Armitage began, vehemently. “He told me it was mine before either of us said a word to each other. Then he started in with his _we must work together, Grand Marshal_ and his _for the sake of the First Order, Grand Marshal_ and his _my actions against you were inexcusable, Grand Marshal_. How insincere can a man be?! He thought that hearing the title over and over, repeated, would get him into my good graces!”

“Why would he want to get into your good graces?” asked the psychologist.

“To neutralize the threat I presented!”

“Couldn’t he have just killed you?”

Armitage sat up very straight in his chair. The psychologist did not flinch. “He needs me. He has no administrative experience or aptitude. If he kills me, the First Order crumbles.”

“Mm.” The psychologist nodded and scribbled something into her datapad with a stylus. “So, while you did not sleep with the Supreme Leader to obtain your promotion, you did eventually sleep with him.”

“I did.” Armitage showed remorse for perhaps the first time in his military career.

“If you’re not too uncomfortable talking about – ”

“We had paid a visit to Coruscant,” said Armitage. “He wanted to show off. He had won, and he wanted to show off. He entered what had been the Imperial Palace, but motioned for the troops that accompanied us to stay back. Only I was instructed to enter with him. He seemed to be searching for something, but he dragged me all the way to the top of the tower and…” Armitage had to stop for a breath. “…a-and we looked out over the view in silence, and it was nighttime but the city was wide awake and I knew he was staring at me and then I looked back at him and he looked like he was afraid of something…”

For the first time, the psychologist showed a hint of unprofessional emotion. “You had intercourse with him in the Imperial Palace?”

“No!” Armitage was disgusted by the thought. “He kissed me!”

“Oh,” said the psychologist. “And… then you returned to your ship?”

“In due course,” said Armitage.

“Did you… have intercourse there?”

“Not at the time,” said Armitage. “We had only just – ”

But she had inquired about them sleeping together, hadn’t she, not kisses. Armitage had turned pink as he told the story. The pink now deepened into red. His own pulse filled his ears.

“Armitage,” said the psychologist. “You’ve been making some strong statements expressing your feelings of hatred towards Kylo Ren, and saying that he is insincere, that he’s using you, that he has ulterior motives for keeping you alive and continuing your sexual relationship despite knowing that you harbor violent fantasies and intentions against him. Would you like to re-evaluate some of those statements?”

“I would not,” said Armitage.

“Okay,” said the psychologist. “If you could wake up tomorrow and by some miracle have everything be perfect in regards to your situation with him… what would your reality look like?”

Armitage thought about that for a long time.

“He would have changed back.”

“What?”

“He would have changed back to how he used to be,” said Armitage. “And… I could just have done with him. End him. Save the Order.”

The psychologist resumed her slow, knowing nods. “Do you believe there’s any chance of him ‘changing back’?”

Armitage thought about that for a long time, too.

“No.”

The psychologist allowed for a moment of silence to mourn before she said, “Armitage, I have some homework for you. Every day, for the next seven days, I want you to give the Supreme Leader _one_ unsolicited, unconditionally positive affirmation.”

“Compliments,” Armitage said flatly.

“Sure,” said the psychologist. “Just one a day. No backhanded compliments, no snide follow-ups – ”

“Alright,” said Armitage.

“No added-on phrases to diminish the positive statement you made, no sarcasm – ”

“ _Yes, I understand_ ,” Armitage said through his teeth.

“Come back to me in a week and we’ll talk about it, okay?”

***

Armitage _could_ have begun his homework assignment that night, but he made the adult decision not to. She _did_ say the _next_ seven days. The day of his next appointment with her could count as the seventh day. This was what he told himself as he washed up for bed. He and Kylo did not participate in any kind of intimate activity that night, except for a quick kiss and the exchange of good-night acknowledgements.

***

_You look very handsome today, Kylo._

There. Easy. All he had to do was say six words to Kylo, then pretend he never said them. Armitage wrote the line himself. Perhaps, if he felt up to it, he could give Kylo a quick kiss on the cheek. That would show her. That straight-laced psychologist woman. She expected him to fail, didn’t she, so she could then drag him through the humiliating depths of his… _complexes_ over Kylo Ren. Well, Grand Marshal Armitage Hux of the First Order had come too far to fail now!

“Kylo,” he said, standing in the doorway of their refresher.

“Yes?” asked Kylo, who had just finished shaving and blow-drying his hair. The volume and lift of it distracted Armitage for a moment, but he quickly regained his focus. Or so he thought.

“You… you lllllook…”

Just as quickly as he regained his focus, Armitage trailed off. The statement puttered out. Kylo glanced at the mirror, lest anything be wrong in public.

“You l-look… very hands-some today-y, Kylo…”

“I…” Kylo looked back to him. “Thank you… Armitage? What’s wrong?”

But his pleased surprise soon changed to sulking. Armitage felt the room spin around him starting on the word handsome. He leaned against the doorframe separating their quarters from their refresher.

“Hilarious,” said Kylo, who did not find this anything related to hilarious.

Armitage wanted to explain, but his breath had grown short. _No!_ he wanted to cry out. _No, I’m trying!_ Alas, he could only stumble to the liquor cabinet and collapse on his sofa to pour himself a drink, and he could only recognize the sofa because of its distinctive ice blue color. Armitage threw the drink into his mouth and sat with his head back on the couch, shaking a little, trying to breathe and regain his composure.

“I get it,” said Kylo, with distinct bitterness.

“W…wait…” Armitage managed to gasp out. “Y-you can read my mind, you do it constantly, look and you’ll – ”

“I don’t _want_ to know what you’re thinking,” said Kylo, already on his way out the door. He slept on the ice blue couch that night.

***

“Hugsie!”

“ _Dameron_.”

Kylo’s absence from his bed and from his consciousness for the past cycle had left Armitage on edge. He snarled the name _Dameron_ and elbowed past a communications officer so he could personally glare at the screen flickering a visual rendering of sound waves in time with Poe Dameron’s voice. It was too familiar in multiple ways: Armitage yearned for the day when he would never have to hear it again, and it also took liberties. Armitage heard it shush what sounded like two other voices snickering. One was female. One was male. Both were young. His heartrate spiked. He knew who they were.

“FN-2187,” he sneered. “And _some girl_. You still think you have any talent for sneaking around? Really?”

“Awwww,” drawled Dameron. “Do you want this to be a _private_ conversation?”

Snorts from FN-2187 and the girl. Armitage’s pasty face flushed. He slammed his fist onto a button that took the call off of the bridge’s intercom and seized a headset from his dumbstricken communications officer “I – I don’t approve of your tone. What is the purpose of this message? Do you wish to negotiate the conditions of your surrender?”

“ _Surrender_? To _you_?” Dameron’s young friends had broken into real laughter now. Armitage distinctly heard someone hiccup. “After you won’t talk to me in front of your crew? Do you have another man you haven’t told me about, Hugs?”

“No,” spat Armitage. “But I do have _one_. I have one – one!” He held up a finger to punctuate the word, even though Dameron could not see it. “– man.”

Edrison Peavey, who had subtly moved to stand near Armitage when he heard Poe Dameron’s voice on the line, shook his head back and forth and made a slashing motion across his throat. He reached for the headset. Armitage reached for his blaster. Peavey stepped away.

“I bet it’s Kylo Ren,” muttered FN-2187. Rey almost screamed at this absurd and hilarious idea. “I could tell you some stories.”

“Oh, trust me,” said Dameron. “So could I.”

Some tiny something inside of Armitage suggested that he ought to say “my affairs are my own, rebel scum”. But Dameron made him see red, and the reminder that it was, in fact, Kylo Ren who was Armitage’s one and only man cause him to swell with pride in response to the powerlessness that Dameron’s taunts made him feel. “As a matter of fact…”

All laughter stopped.

“Is…” said the girl’s voice. “Is he trying to tell a joke?”

“It is not a joke,” Armitage announced, gloating. On the bridge, he stood as tall as he could and pushed back his shoulders. “Having put aside our differences, we learned we have more common ground than we once thought.” He then added, not knowing where the turn of phrase came in from within himself: “We are of one flesh.”

“D’you guys make out?” asked Dameron.

“Yes, Dameron, we _make out_. I will have you know that the Supreme Leader and I engage in open-mouth kissing with such frequency that it has become _routine_! And clearly, you are not so fortunate, or you would never have begun this salacious line of inquiry.”

“Hux,” said Kylo Ren, unamused.

Armitage yelped and tried to jerk the headset off of his head. It bent, but his shaking fingers let go of it and one earphone thwacked him on the cheek. “Supreme- Kylo, I – !”

“You’re right,” said Dameron’s muffled voice. “I’m not so fortunate. I’m genuinely happy for you, Hugs. I can’t think of anyone more deserving.”

Kylo glared at Armitage. His top lip curled inward over his clenched teeth. Hux finally succeeded in getting the headset off, like it would absolve him of guilt. Peavey snatched it before more damage could be done. “What- why’re you- what are you worked up over now?” Armitage sneered. He knew, vaguely, that he was guilty and Kylo had the right to be angry. That would not stop him from trying to shift some of the blame off of himself.

“That was our private business, Armitage,” said Kylo, measured.

“Wh-why do you want me to be a secret?!” Armitage countered.

“I don’t,” said Kylo. “I never said you were. But our _relationship_ is not just something you can _use_ to get one over on people. _I’m_ not something you can _use_. Especially not after you – !”

Kylo stopped. He looked around. The entire bridge stared at the Supreme Leader and the Grand Marshal. Not one eye was left un-widened. Kylo huffed, turned on his heel, and walked away. Distantly, Armitage heard Peavey telling Dameron off and hanging up on him. The transmission channel was encoded and of no use to the First Order in tracking the Resistance. The only possible purpose of the message was to test it, and Dameron, FN-2187, and the girl were likely somewhere far from their allies, so they could slip away if pursued without endangering the others. That, and to get under Armitage Hux’s skin, because it amused them to do so.

And Armitage fell for it. As everyone quietly resumed their work, he lowered his eyes to stare at the floor. Kylo slept on the ice blue couch again that night.

***

Armitage thought that after one sleepless night, he would pass out as soon as his head hit his silky black pillow. He was wrong. When his chronometer buzzed at him to wake up and start his shift, he knew he could not have been asleep for more than three hours. He had grown unaccustomed to that. Sleeping with Kylo, he had gotten used to six or eight hours of sound sleep every time. Whether they were courtesy of Kylo’s abilities or just the physical comfort he provided, Armitage did not know, and that morning, he did not care.

It was unbearable. Kylo and Armitage moved about their shared quarters, not speaking to each other as they pulled themselves through their routines. Armitage stared at his mug of tea until it got cold. Kylo had been in the shower long enough to use up all of the hot water. He probably did it on purpose. Armitage would take his cold shower next and not complain. He was late, anyway, and the cold would encourage him not to spend too much time dawdling around in the temptation to enjoy himself.

Finally, after what felt like hours of a sleep-deprived Armitage drumming his fingers, tugging at his robe, and glancing at the refresher door, Kylo emerged with his hair completely dry and a full set of robes on. It took determination to take an unbearably (to Armitage) hot shower, shave, do his whole skincare routine, dry and style his hair, and put on the kind of clothes he wore in a modest-sized refresher. Such was his resolve to not interact.

“Kylo,” said Armitage as Kylo walked right past him. Kylo did not pause. He headed for the door. Armitage sprang up from his seat and grabbed Kylo’s arm. He stopped. “Kylo, I’m sorry. I’m… _sorry_. I shouldn’t have told him anything about us. I didn’t think of your feelings. I only thought about how much I hated him, and how I have something he doesn’t and how I wanted him to feel as furious about it as I do every time he opens his mouth. Wait!”

For Kylo had pulled his arm away.

“And the day before yesterday, I’m sorry about what happened, but I wasn’t trying to hurt you! I meant what I said!” Armitage shouted. “But… Kylo, this isn’t easy!”

“Oh, I know I’m not easy to love,” said Kylo, with heavy sarcasm. “I learned that a long time ago.”

“It’s not easy for me to love anybody!” Armitage said, indignant. “I’m _trying_!” Indeed, the same shortness of breath and unsteadiness he felt when he tried to pay Kylo one simple compliment had returned. Armitage leaned against his desk, for he had to chase Kylo into the part of his quarters where he kept his office. “I-I’m sorry that I behaved in a way which caused you to feel insecure, but I did not do it on purpose and I wish you would consider how I feel, trying to do something I’ve never done before!”

Kylo whipped around, wearing the same curled-in, gritting expression as the day before. “How hard can it be to show your appreciation for someone you care about?!”

“Excruciatingly!” said Armitage. “When you don’t know how to… how to…” He clutched his forehead. How to what? What was it he didn’t know how to do? “How to show…”

Armitage wished this would be the part where Kylo relented, drew close to him, and helped him to the couch to catch his breath. But alas, this was only the part where Kylo crossed his arms over his stomach and looked down his nose at him.

“…h-how to show weakness,” said Armitage.

This was the wrong answer. He felt the wind from Kylo’s cape as he turned to storm away. Once he was gone Armitage let himself show some weakness by sitting on the floor. He had said “weakness”. It offended Kylo all over again that he called his attachment to Kylo “weakness”. But Armitage had not meant “weakness”. He meant something else. He meant something more like “vulnerability”.

Kylo did not return at his usual time that night. Armitage laid awake again, thinking (fearing) that he would not come. Eventually, he did, and returned to the couch. But mere seconds after he heard an especially loud sniff from Armitage, he stumbled to his side and crawled into bed next to him. Armitage turned at once to put his arms around him.

“I couldn’t sleep without you,” he whispered.

“I couldn’t sleep without you either,” Kylo whispered back.

“I sleep better with you here,” said Armitage. “I appreciate it now.”

“Mm-hm…”

Kylo’s sleepy grunt was sincere. He understood. But he was already drifting off, and so was Armitage…

***

“You look very handsome today, Kylo.”

“Thank you, Armitage.”

Kylo quirked a brow and tapped his fingertip against his cheek. Armitage kissed it, still shaking a little from the stress that came with showing vulnerability and appreciation for Kylo as a person. Kylo smiled.

***

They ate dinner together the following evening, as was their custom. Kylo cooked. Less customary was the absence of anything related to their work.

“When we build a new flagship, I want our quarters to be bigger. I want a dining area. A bigger kitchen,” said Kylo.

“These rooms were never meant to house two people,” Armitage agreed. “Nor was my bed.”

“I think the bed is a perfect size,” said Kylo.

“I think it could be a touch larger, Kylo.”

“No.”

“We don’t have to change how we fall asleep. But we always wake up on opposite sides of the bed, don’t we? It’s only a matter of time before one of us falls off. We should get a bigger one.”

“Do you promise we’ll still cuddle?” asked Kylo.

“Yes, I promise,” said Armitage. “We will still cuddle.”

Later, they went to bed and they cuddled.

“But,” said Kylo. “This bed has sentimental value. This is the bed you couldn’t kill me in.”

“I wonder why I didn’t,” sighed Armitage. “It must be because I couldn’t stand to be without you. How I have fallen into disgrace.”

***

Twenty-four hours later, they were back in the same bed, watching a holo with a strange new dish Armitage had never encountered between them.

“You’re getting crumbs everywhere,” said Armitage.

“I’ll wipe them off before we go to sleep and have the cleaning droids come tomorrow,” said Kylo. “Open your mouth.”

Kylo opened his mouth to show Armitage what he was supposed to do. From the instant the spoon moved between Armitage’s parted lips, he felt his life change. It was sweet. Sweeter than anything he had ever tasted, from the fluffy bread-like body of it to the dense, sugary topping. Armitage did not exactly chew, but he moved it around in his mouth before swallowing.

“What did you say this was called?”

“Cake.”

“Hm.”

Armitage picked up his own spoon. Unbeknownst to him, this cake Kylo had baked for them was almost as small as a cake could be. They got about six bites each. With one of those bites in his mouth and without warning, Kylo moved in for a kiss.

Armitage found himself overwhelmed with what could only be Kylo projecting impressions and emotions into his mind. They forced him to think of how his hand felt with Kylo’s much larger hand over it and how timidly Armitage still kissed, after so many kisses between them. He felt how blissfully, almost deliriously happy Kylo was that things were different now. Things were better. How much better they had made life for each other. How Kylo no longer felt alone and unanchored, and how Armitage had more life in him than ever he had before.

Armitage pulled back, sputtering and trying to catch bits of cake that dropped onto their sheets.

“You’re so – ew – _dramatic_ …”

Kylo wiped some cake off his chin. He turned on the lights so they could see. They would have to change the sheets, in the end. “It’s worth it.”

“Well. Thank you for showing me.”

“I’ve always wanted to show you.”

“…what cake is like.”

“Ah.” Kylo nodded. “Yes, of course.”

“And… a-and…”

Kylo nodded to encourage him.

“…thank you for… for showing me how you feel…”

Kylo tickled Armitage under the chin before he could be stopped. “Whenever you want, Armitage.”

Armitage covered his face – and smacked himself on the cheek with a glob of cake.

***

“Mmhm. And have you given Kylo an unprompted positive affirmation today? Isn’t this the seventh day?” asked the psychologist.

“I can’t remember,” Armitage admitted. “One moment.”

He took out his com.

<The Grand Marshal wishes to inform the Supreme Leader that he cares for him ever so much.>

“Yes,” said Armitage. “I did.”


End file.
